FIDE World Cup: Divya Deshmukh eliminated in first round; IM Aronyak Ghosh defeats grandmaster to force tiebreaks

Divya Deshmukh’s tryst with the FIDE World Cup in Goa ended on Sunday with a second successive defeat to Greek grandmaster Stamatis Kourkoulos-Arditis, this time in 73 moves with the black pieces. Divya was the only woman in the 206-player field at the World Cup in Goa. With 80 rating points separating Divya from Kourkoulos-Arditis, the 19-year-old from Nagpur was not the favourite in the two-game contest. But Divya’s recent results at tournaments—winning the FIDE Women’s World Cup and her wins over two grandmasters at the FIDE Grand Swiss — besides her reputation of coming up clutch in must-win situations, and her tendency to fight to the death in games, meant she would have fancied her chances at dragging Kourkoulos-Arditis into the tie-breaks on Monday at the Goa event. Besides Divya, h